Bug#402994: use new libpaper hook to track system paper size
On Fri, Dec 15, 2006 at 08:29 +0100, Frank Küster wrote:
> > Are you talking about dvipdfm or dvips here?
>
> About dvipdfm. I haven't looked at dvips, and it doesn't make sense if
> both behave different.
Ok. I was more concerned with dvips here, having put dvipdfm aside as it
already used libpaper. So my comments concerning config files referred
to dvips.
> I guess the patch to texconfig that you wrote is
> the better approach.
The approach is flawed, however, since it is very easy to construct
situations where files in /etc are automatically changed, which we must
not do. Hence it is probably easier to make all files that can be
changed via texconfig proper configfiles in /etc, as you already
suggested. Then we would need the permission to modify these files in
some aspects. We could get this permission either via a debconf message
(IMO overkill) or by something like this:
The libpaper hock script reads in, say, /etc/default/tetex which
contains a variable, say, USE_LIBPAPER. By default this variable is set
to 'no', which makes the libpaper hock script excit with a suitable
message. If the variable is set to 'yes', the libpaper hock script will
adjust the configuration files.
Needed documentation: Mention this new mechanism (NEWS.Debian and 'TeX
on Debian'). Explain that it might automatically change configuration
files and explain the consequences, ie, that people should just accept
new upstream versions if they did not make any other changes. Really,
really stress that this only configures the default output paper size of
the various *programs* but not of the *formats*, and that using things
like geometry.sty is the better idea.
Nice thing would be that no patches for texconfig or dvips/dvipdfm would
be needed.
cheerio
ralf
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